


Jacket

by coalitiongirl_ficlets (coalitiongirl)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, post 4b
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-08
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2018-04-03 10:09:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4096963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coalitiongirl/pseuds/coalitiongirl_ficlets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the sacrifice, Emma's red jacket is missing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jacket

**Author's Note:**

> Back to moving fics over here! I will endeavor to do this gradually~

emma’s red jacket is missing. it isn’t in the loft and it isn’t at the station and it isn’t somewhere else careless, flung over a chair in the author’s mansion or on the floor in the back of the patrol car. emma is missing and her armor against the world is missing (she’d worn it so many times, the night of  _you’re henry’s birth mother?_ and the day of  _so what do we do?_ and the day of kale salad and root beer and the day when they’d jumped into a car together to fight fate). 

regina carries the weight of its absence like she carries the weight of the dagger with emma swan’s name on it against her thigh and she carries the weight of its absence like she carries a late night in her crypt when emma had just wanted them to be friends. regina carries the weight of its absence like she does henry as he sobs and snow as she sobs and regina’s supposed to be happy, right? emma died for regina to be happy. (emma lost her childhood so regina could be happy, too, and she rages and shouts and rails at the world when she’s all alone sometimes. none of this is fair. not for emma. emma deserved–)

snow finds regina going through emma’s closet one day when she’s supposed to be at work (she sits at her desk with bright-eyed children and she’s red-eyed and dull, and she wallows in regrets and has stopped struggling to find hope), and there’s a moment. when everything is still and regina doesn’t know what to say, because  _emma, emma, emma and her armor_ and regina was supposed to protect her, right? regina was supposed to be–

–happy.

(”i know,” snow says. “it isn’t there,” snow says. “henry’s been looking for a week,” snow says. snow bursts into tears and they lie on emma’s bed together and hold each other like sisters or mothers or just two women who’d loved a girl who’d wanted to be everything for them.)

sometimes regina thinks that emma had managed to take her armor with her, somehow, had managed to protect herself from what she’d become (what’s to come? what will emma be?  _who_ , she reminds herself. never what). sometimes regina wishes for it until she’s lost again, staring into the darkness and wondering  _why_ , wondering  _how_ , wondering  _i loved you_ or maybe that’s just wonder. sometimes (always) regina closes her eyes and sees blonde curls and a ready smile and eyes that had always sought more from her, and she doesn’t dare imagine them turned cruel with the power of the dark one. she holds henry and she thinks  _family_ and it doesn’t feel the same anymore even when it’s what it had always been before. sometimes regina imagines fairytales that work out for emma, like she’d always thought they would before.

and that emma has her jacket with her, and that she’s safe and protected somehow.

one day regina is in her office and she sees a little corner of red leather poking out from under the couch and she falls to the ground and sobs and screams and sobs and what the fuck is a happy ending without emma swan anymore.


End file.
